Just two weeks after announcing a new soft brand, IHG Hotels & Resorts has revealed details of what will set the collection apart and where it will be growing.
Vignette Collection, IHG's sixth brand launch in four years, began to take shape about a year ago as the company adjusted to the pandemic and faced “higher than normal exits,” said Jane Mackie, SVP of global marketing and luxury brands. “While we have growth strategies for all of our brands, we realized—as we looked across the luxury and lifestyle category and we looked at the supply side of hotels—we had a gap for independent owners and operators of independent hotels that had strong identities.”
Related: IHG to launch luxury lifestyle soft brand
IHG's brands in the luxury and lifestyle category have “very defined hallmarks,” Mackie said, noting that some have strict design standards. “We saw this opportunity to rapidly bring in very high-quality hotels into our system but [also] to create a family around it and some brand-level identity as well.” As travel began to rebound in the summer of 2020, the company saw opportunities for both revenue growth as well as chain size and system size growth, and started developing the new concept.
Owners of independent hotels who join the collection will be able to retain their identities while taking advantage of IHG benefits.
The Challenger Brand
With a number of soft brands and collections already established in the market, Mackie acknowledged that Vignette will be a challenger to the segment. To set it apart from the comp set, the brand will target luxury hotels that are neither very small nor very large. The ideal hotels will sit “in the entry-luxury price point at a relatively high-touch level of service that can be afforded when a hotel is not too big to be able to provide that or too small to be able to afford staffing,” she said.
IHG is simultaneously launching this brand in all of its major regions—the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Africa, Australasia and Greater China. Ultimately, the company aims to have 100 properties in the collection within 10 years.
First Members
Among the first hotels to join IHG’s Vignette Collection will be Hotel X in Brisbane, Australia, and Pattaya, The Aquatique hotel in Thailand, developed with local lifestyle real estate group, Asset World Corporation Public Co. “We wanted to show that the collection could be urban and in different types of urban locations—maybe not city center—and also it can stretch to resorts,” Mackie said of the debut properties.
The company expects conversions of independent luxury and lifestyle hotels and small portfolios to further fast-track the company’s growth in a market worth more than $100 billion, and where more than 1.5 million rooms globally are currently independent. As the brand grows, IHG will be looking to gain ground in both urban markets that are not oversaturated with luxury and lifestyle supply. Resort markets may be a primary target for a while as leisure travel dominates and IHG Rewards members look to redeem the loyalty points they have not been able to use, she added, but high-demand urban markets like Paris and London can support more luxury supply and will be of interest as well.
The company also plans to take a “global approach” in terms of ownership groups, targeting properties that may be individually or family-owned. “But we're also looking at small portfolios where the hotels each have a unique identity or perhaps even a secondary brand,” Mackie said. Hotels that are seeking a loyalty program, a global distribution system and negotiating power would be a good fit as well, she added. For now, about 90 percent of discussions for brand membership would be for conversions, but Mackie expects to see some new-builds join the collection in the future.
IHG now has 17 brands with nearly 6,000 hotels in more than 100 countries.